As you can hear in the YouTube clip above, Blaine Cooper enquired about the company’s “no hesitation” targets, which also feature children, elderly gun owners and mothers in playgrounds, and was told that the target showing a pregnant woman was a “requested law enforcement target for training.”

The representative refused to answer why police would be interested in training to shoot pregnant women, but went on to explain, “unfortunately our world is made up of people, pregnant or otherwise, that are gun owners not for the right reasons,” adding that the targets were to “train police officers”.

The woman refused to give her name, accusing Cooper of being “angry.” “Could you understand why I’m upset if the government is trying to make targets to kill citizens – I don’t feel that’s right,” he responded.

The representative also claims that the targets could be used for “don’t shoot” training, which is somewhat dubious given that they are called “no hesitation” targets and every single one of them is described as a “threat” target in the product description.

The shooting targets, intended to “help the transition for officers who are faced with these highly unusual targets for the first time,” include “pregnant woman threat,” “older man with shotgun,” “older man in home with shotgun,” “older woman with gun,” “young school aged girl,” “young mother on playground,” and “little boy with real gun.”

Another customer who called the company claims he was told that the targets were, “strictly for Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies.”

Asked by Mike Riggs at Reason about the targets, the company responded, “The subjects in NMH targets were chosen in order to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training. I found while speaking with officers and trainers in the law enforcement community that there is a hesitation on the part of cops when deadly force is required on subjects with atypical age, frailty or condition (one officer explaining that he enlarged photos of his own kids to use as targets so that he would not be caught off guard with such a drastically new experience while on duty). This hesitation time may be only seconds but that is not acceptable when officers are losing their lives in these same situations. The goal of NMH is to break that stereotype on the range, regardless of how slim the chances are of encountering a real life scenario that involves a child, pregnant woman, etc. If that initial hesitation time can be cut down due to range experience, the officer and community are better served.”

The targets are still available for sale on the company’s website via this link (screenshot here).

The targets are still available for sale on the company’s website via this link (screenshot here).